JERUSALEM — Israeli and Palestinian pathologists on Thursday offered contradictory interpretations of a joint autopsy report on the prominent Palestinian official who died after a confrontation with Israeli security forces at a West Bank demonstration a day earlier.

The Israeli pathologists concluded that the official, Ziad Abu Ein, 55, had died of a heart attack that could have been caused by stress. A statement on the preliminary autopsy report issued by the Israeli Health Ministry noted that Mr. Abu Ein might have been more susceptible to stress because he was suffering from heart disease.

However, the Palestinian forensic expert, Dr. Saber al-Aloul, told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah that Mr. Abu Ein had died as a result of violence and not from natural causes, according to Wafa, the official Palestinian news agency.

The episode has increased internal pressure on the Western-backed Palestinian Authority to halt security coordination with Israel and to consider other protest steps. The security policy is unpopular with many Palestinians but is crucial to Israel’s relations with the Palestinian Authority.

Pathologists on both sides did agree that Mr. Abu Ein suffered a blockage of a coronary artery because of hemorrhaging in the inner lining of the heart that was probably a result of stress. But Dr. Aloul pointed to wounds to Mr. Abu Ein’s front teeth and bruises on the tongue, neck and windpipe as indicative of violent acts that led to his death.

Ehab Bessaiso, the spokesman for the Palestinian government, said, “Today, based on the autopsy results, we hold the Israeli government accountable for the murder of Ziad Abu Ein.”

Dr. Chen Kugel, the Israeli chief pathologist who participated in the autopsy alongside Palestinian counterparts and Jordanian doctors late on Wednesday, told Israel Radio that the mouth wounds and bruising “could have been caused by violence.” But he said he thought those injuries were “more compatible with the results of resuscitation efforts.”

Mr. Abu Ein held the rank of minister in the Palestinian Authority as the head of a committee for the struggle against the Israeli West Bank barrier and the settlements. He died Wednesday after being shoved by Israeli soldiers and border police officers trying to prevent demonstrators from reaching a patch of land where they intended to plant olive trees near an Israeli settlement outpost.

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Relatives of Mr. Abu Ein during his funeral on Thursday. His death has increased internal pressure on the Palestinian Authority to halt security coordination with Israel.CreditIlia Yefimovich/Getty Images

Images from the scene showed a member of the security forces shoving Mr. Abu Ein while grabbing him roughly by the neck. Witnesses said one of the Israeli soldiers, wearing a helmet, head-butted Mr. Abu Ein in the chest. The security forces also fired tear gas at the protesters, who held olive branches and Palestinian flags, in an effort to disperse the demonstration.

Thousands of Palestinians streamed to the Mukata, the Ramallah headquarters of President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, to honor Mr. Abu Ein, a senior member of Mr. Abbas’s party, Fatah, and of its Revolutionary Council, or Parliament.

Presidential guards walked into the courtyard of the Mukata carrying Mr. Abu Ein’s coffin wrapped in the Palestinian flag. There were no speeches, just somber music as Mr. Abbas and other officials bade him farewell.

Thousands of Palestinians, most of them male Fatah activists, then followed the coffin through the streets to a nearby cemetery, where Mr. Abu Ein was buried. They raised the yellow flag of Fatah as well as Palestinian flags and fired in the air to shouts of “Allahu akbar,” the rituals of a hero’s funeral.

Taj Adeen al-Husseini, 66, had come from another West Bank city, Nablus, to pay his respects to Mr. Abu Ein, a former cellmate from Israeli prisons. Mr. Abu Ein was sentenced to life in prison over a 1979 bombing that killed two Israeli teenagers, though he always denied involvement. He was released after three years as part of a prisoner exchange deal, but subsequently spent more terms in jail under administrative detention.

“He was humble,” Mr. Husseini said of Mr. Abu Ein. “He went without guards, despite his rank of minister.”

Issa Amro, 35, an engineer from Hebron, said Mr. Abu Ein visited that southern West Bank city three times in the past three weeks, opening a kindergarten and speaking to students at the university as he tried to recruit activists for what Mr. Amro described as a popular resistance movement. He described Mr. Abu Ein as a “guardian of the land.”

After Mr. Abu Ein’s death, Mr. Abbas called for three days of mourning, and Israel bolstered its forces in the West Bank in anticipation of rising tensions and clashes.

Though a meeting on Wednesday night ended without any decisions, Azzam al-Ahmad, a Fatah leader, said the Palestinian leadership was “seriously studying the option of ending all forms of coordination” with Israel, including security coordination.

He said the leadership was also considering other countermeasures, like speeding up the submission of a United Nations Security Council draft resolution setting a deadline for the end of the Israeli occupation and taking steps to join the International Criminal Court, with the intention of suing Israel.

Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem, and Said Ghazali from Ramallah, West Bank.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: Doctors Draw Contradictory Conclusions After Autopsy of Palestinian Official. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe